Secrets on 26th Street

by Elizabeth McDavid Jones

  Bea was so lively and seemed so genuinely interested in her that Susan soon found herself chatting easily. While they talked, Bea continued to hand Susan more belongings from her trunk to put away. There were skirts and blouses, jackets, a cape, and beautiful underclothes trimmed with lace—camisoles, corsets, stockings. And there were several hats. Mum had only one, the wide-brimmed straw hat Dad had given her for Easter two years ago. Mum always hung it on a hook on the wall, like she did with her dresses—the three or four that she had. But there weren’t enough hooks on Mum’s walls for the hats and clothes Bea had told Susan to pile on the bed.

  “Oh dear,” Bea said, as she apparently came to the same conclusion. “What was I thinking, bringing all these things? I suppose they’ll have to go back in the trunk once we’re done.”

  Bea’s matter-of-fact attitude toward her beautiful clothes perplexed Susan. Mum fussed so over the few dresses she had—hanging them neatly, ironing and mending—and she taught Helen and Susan to do the same. They all had to make clothes last as long as possible.

  Bea’s manner changed, however, as she lifted out of the trunk a rectangular package tied in brown paper. She loosened the strings gently, then lifted away the paper to reveal a framed photograph. Bea looked at the photograph intently for a moment, then ran the fingers of one hand along the frame’s edge.

  Curious, Susan couldn’t keep from leaning over Bea’s shoulder. Bea glanced up, then smiled at Susan and handed her the photograph. “Careful, love, this means quite a lot to me.”

  Susan had never seen such a lovely frame. It was heavy, made of rich, polished wood edged with gold. The photograph was of Bea and some other women, arm in arm, in a city scene with statues of lions in the background. “Where was the photograph taken?” Susan asked.

  “Trafalgar Square. In London. It’s like your Times Square here.” The women, Bea said, were some of her good friends back in England. “This one”—she pointed out an older lady—“was like a mother to me. She and her daughter, here”—she pointed to a very pretty younger woman with blond hair—“helped me find direction in my life when I needed it.” She took the frame from Susan and carefully placed it on the nightstand.

  Susan wondered what sort of direction the women had given Bea. Had that direction led her here, to New York City, and to Chelsea? After all, it was a little strange that Bea, with all her beautiful things, should choose to rent a room in this old building. It seemed she could afford to board in a nicer place, a brownstone maybe, or one of the new apartment houses uptown. Curiosity itched at Susan, but she knew it would be rude to ask.

  Besides, Bea was furiously rummaging through the remaining contents of the trunk—mostly books and bundles of papers—pulling them out and stacking them on the floor. “I remembered what I did with that book,” she said. “It was the first thing I packed, because I didn’t want to forget it. So it’s got to be at the very bottom of the trunk. Ah, here it is.” She smiled as if she’d just found an old friend. “Middlemarch, by George Eliot.”

  Susan sat on the bed beside Bea to look at the book.

  “You’d never guess by the name, but George Eliot was a woman.” Bea sounded as pleased as if George Eliot had been her sister. “She was one of the most noted authors of her day. She feared her writing would never be taken seriously if it were known she was a woman, so she used an alias, a pen name. I like her because her female characters are women who know their own minds. There’s nothing weak or wishy-washy about them. They rely on themselves to get what they want.”

  “You mean the heroine gets to kill the dragons and catch the bank robbers?”

  Bea laughed. “Something like that. I’ve marked my favorite passages. Flip through and see what you think while I decide what to do with the rest of this rubbish in my trunk.”

  Susan took the book and eagerly began to turn the pages. She was curious to see what passages Bea had underlined. Susan spotted an interesting part at the bottom of the page that reminded her of her own feelings this afternoon—something about being hemmed in by a life which seemed nothing but a walled-in maze of small paths that led nowhere. She flipped to the next page to finish it.

  When she did, a folded piece of paper—it looked like a letter—fell from between the pages onto the floor. As Susan reached to pick up the letter, her eye fell on the words must be kept secret for now.

  Bea looked up from her packing and spotted the letter lying on the floor. “I wondered what I had done with that letter,” Bea said. She whisked it up and stashed it in the drawer of the nightstand. Then she said brightly, “What do you think of the book?”

  Lying in bed that night, Susan thought about Bea’s letter and the words that she had seen: must be kept secret for now. A strange sensation tingled Susan’s spine, and she wasn’t sure if it was fear or excitement. In a way, it was glamorous to think of having not an ordinary boarder, but a boarder with a secret.

  What was Bea’s secret? Susan’s imagination spun out countless possibilities. The one that intrigued her most sprang from the newspaper headline this afternoon. Bea’s betrothed was a spy for England. He was to be sent deep into enemy territory, perhaps to Berlin itself, on a mission that must be kept secret for now. He feared for Bea’s safety if his mission should be discovered, so he sent her to America until the war was over. Susan’s heart beat faster with the adventure of it all, and she couldn’t go to sleep for a very long time.

  CHAPTER 4

  BLUFFING

  Bea’s secret was still on Susan’s mind when she woke up in the morning, and she couldn’t resist telling Helen about it.

  Helen immediately got stars in her eyes. “No, no, no, I’m sure you’re wrong, Susie. I’ll bet it’s a love affair that Bea’s keeping secret. Bea’s probably engaged to a wealthy Englishman whose family doesn’t like her. Maybe they think she’s too poor, so he has to wait to marry her until after he inherits his money. I saw the same thing in one of Mary Pickford’s movies.”

  Susan raised an eyebrow “I suppose a secret engagement would be more likely than a spy mission, though I think I’d rather it be the spy mission. That’s much more exciting.”

  The girls continued to whisper about Bea’s secret for the next few days. Susan even told Russell about it, though she swore him to secrecy. He, too, liked the idea of a spy mission, but he convinced Susan that Helen’s guess was probably closer to the truth. “Nothing as exciting as spying would ever happen on 26th Street,” he said. Susan reluctantly agreed.

  As a week passed, however, and then another, and cold, gray September drew to a close, it wasn’t so much Bea’s secret that fascinated Susan as it was Bea herself.

  Bea seemed different from the other women Susan knew. Susan couldn’t really explain how; Bea was just … different.

  Bea had a talent for making everyday things special. She was a wonderful cook. She bought fresh vegetables every day from the pushcart vendors and prepared them in strange and wonderful ways. Cabbage and potatoes, the staples of the O’Neal diet before Bea arrived, were given new life under Bea’s hand. They became cabbage rolls, potatoes au gratin, and shepherd’s pie. She also came home with meat several times a week and sometimes pastries from D’Attilio’s. “You girls,” she said, “all need fattening up, and your mum, too. You’re skinny as rails.” She fixed them British dishes, like sweetmeats and mince pies, and when Lucy turned up her nose at trying them, Bea pretended to be the witch in “Hansel and Gretel,” fattening Lucy for the oven. Lucy loved it and always ended up cleaning her plate.

  But it was more than that. Susan herself felt different around Bea. Maybe it was the way Bea asked so many questions—not nosy questions, but wondering questions—the same kinds of questions that went around in Susan’s head. Sometimes Susan would catch Bea staring off into space. Susan would ask her what was wrong, and Bea would say, “I was just thinking, love.” Then she would tell Susan what she was thinking about.

  That’s what Susan liked best about Bea: Bea talked to Susan. Not in th
e way most grown-ups talked to children; instead Susan always felt that Bea truly valued her opinion. When Bea was reading—and she read a lot, like Susan did—she would often stop and read a passage aloud to Susan and ask Susan what she thought about it. Then Bea would carefully consider whatever Susan said. Sometimes she would ask questions about Susan’s comment that made Susan think in a new way about the passage. And sometimes Susan would ask questions that Bea claimed made her think in a new way. Susan began to think of reading as more than simply an enjoyable pastime; talking to Bea turned reading into an adventure.

  In fact, talking to Bea made even the drudgery of Susan’s chores seem almost fun. When Susan had to wash dishes or scrub the floor, Bea worked right alongside her, and they talked as they worked. It wasn’t long before Susan found herself telling Bea things that she hadn’t even told Mum, like her dream of going to college. To Susan’s surprise, Bea encouraged her to pursue it. “If something is truly important to you,” Bea said, “you can usually discover a way to achieve it.”

  Susan noticed that Bea was very skillful at discovering ways to do what she wanted. She found a job at the Nabisco factory the very first day she went out looking. Bea said she and her boss got along famously, and they must have, for Bea didn’t seem to work nearly as much as the other Nabisco employees Susan knew. Bea’s hours were unusual, too. She was always changing shifts, sometimes working during the day and sometimes in the evenings. Susan chalked it all up to Bea’s powers of persuasion. She could talk people into anything and make them think it was their idea all along. Just the way she’d talked Mr. D’Attilio into giving away his fresh bread.

  Yes, Susan told herself, Bea was different. And her presence had made a difference in the family. Mum seemed happier; she smiled more. Mum and Bea stayed up late at night talking. It was comforting to hear the murmur of their voices as Susan drifted off to sleep every night. It reminded her of the days when Dad was alive and she had fallen asleep each night to the sound of Mum’s and Dad’s voices in the room beside her.

  October came to Chelsea warm and golden, one sunny day following another. It was almost as if Bea had brought Indian summer with her. The sun shone every day from a clear blue sky, and across the river Susan could see wooded hills glowing gold and red with autumn colors.

  The weather was so fine, and Mum seemed so much happier, Susan nearly forgot about Lester Barrow and the overdue rent. Until one day when she came home from school and found Mum already home from work. Mum wasn’t feeling good, Bea said, and she was resting in bed.

  Instantly Susan thought of Dad, coming home sick one day, dead two weeks later. Panic rose in Susan’s throat. “Mum’s sick? I have to see her.”

  Bea, concern on her face, glanced at the closed door of the closet where Mum slept. At that moment the closet door opened and Mum appeared. The waning sun filtering through the single window framed Mum’s face in shadows.

  “Thank you, Bea, for giving me time to rest.” Her voice trembled, and when she stepped out of the shadows, her face became that of someone Susan didn’t know: an old woman, pale and hollow-eyed. Mum looked as if she had aged years since she left for work that morning. What had happened to her?

  Mum slumped down at the table, and Bea put a cup of tea in front of her.

  Susan watched Mum mechanically lift the cup to her mouth. Lucy was chattering away, but Mum scarcely took note of her. She seemed to be far away from the dingy kitchen. Something was horribly wrong. Susan glanced at Helen, searching for a clue, but Helen’s baffled expression said she didn’t know any more than Susan did. Even Bea was subdued, talking quietly to Lucy.

  Finally Mum sighed, and the sigh seemed to bring her back to them. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Lester Barrow came to see me at work today. He can’t be helping me forever, he says.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m afraid our time is running out.”

  Susan was horrified.

  “What happens if you can’t pay him soon?” asked Helen.

  “I’m afraid we’ll be moving to Five Points, little one. There’s nothing more I can do.”

  Bea set down the knife she’d been using to butter bread for Lucy. “Let’s think about this a minute. What Lester Barrow really wants is his money. If you move, he loses all the rent you owe him, as well as a tenant. If he believes there’s the smallest chance of getting paid, he’s not likely to throw you out. Am I right?”

  “You’re making sense. But he knows I can’t pay, or I’d have done so already.”

  “Ah, there’s a secret to dealing with men like him.”

  Mum looked up from the table.

  Bea spoke slowly. “You must appear calm and confident when you talk to him, like this.” She paused, Susan guessed, to let the effect of her voice sink in. “Never show despair. Even if you’re frightened to death of him, don’t let him know it.” Then her tone became urgent. “I tell you, Rose, despair is our worst enemy. Men like Lester will use it against us time and again. They’ve always used it against us. They know it makes us roll over and give up, rather than fight.”

  Susan was confused. Who was Bea talking about? What did she mean by us?

  Mum’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know, Bea. I can’t see Lester being fooled by a change in my attitude.”

  “I’m not thinking he’ll be fooled, simply unsettled. He’ll see you can’t be frightened by his bullying, and—” Bea’s eyes darted to Helen and Susan, both listening intently, then back to Mum. “We’ll talk about it later, Rose, all right?”

  Mum nodded, but Susan thought she still looked doubtful.

  Anxiety lay heavy in Susan’s belly. She wanted to believe Bea was right, but she was almost afraid for Mum to try what Bea suggested. It seemed like playing with fire to try to trick Lester, even if Bea said it wasn’t really a trick. What would happen to Mum when Lester realized she had been stringing him along? Susan didn’t want to think about it.

  She asked to be excused and headed to the fire escape outside her window. The fire escape was Susan’s retreat, a place she could be alone to think or to watch what was going on in the street below. Russell’s fire escape was two windows over from Susan’s, and sometimes they met out there to talk, away from the listening ears of parents and brothers and sisters.

  As soon as Susan stuck her head out her window, she saw Russell on his fire escape, reading. Her first reaction was disappointment; she’d wanted to be alone. Then she decided it might be a relief to talk to him.

  “Hi, Sue,” he said as she climbed out. “I’m just now getting started on my book for the essay assignment. Great Expectations. I can’t seem to get interested in it.”

  Susan smiled. Russell said that about every book he had to read for school. “Russell, the essay’s due in three weeks.”

  “I know, but I haven’t had time to read, what with working two jobs. Did I tell you about my new job at the barbershop over by Penn Central Station?”

  Susan rolled her eyes. “Only two or three times.” In fact, Russell had been bragging ever since he got the job about all the money he was making selling morning newspapers and shining shoes at the barbershop after school and on Saturdays.

  Russell went on about his job as if he hadn’t heard Susan. “My boss, Mr. Delaney, takes a cut of all our tips—he says it’s his right since it’s him who hires us out to the barbers—but I still average around two bits a day. I give half of that to Ma, but the rest I add to my newspaper money and save. You’ll see, it won’t be long now before I can buy a bicycle for my delivery service.” Russell had been saving for over a year to start his own delivery service when he finished grammar school.

  “That’s grand, Russell, grand,” said Susan. “I would think you’d be a favorite with your boss, making him that much money every day.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  An idea was taking shape in Susan’s head, a tiny grain of an idea that grew with every word Russell said about his job. It was a way she could help Mum get caught up on the rent. She believed it wou
ld work, if only Russell would help her. “I’m glad your boss likes you, Russell. That means you can put in a word for me, so I can get a job with him, too. Mum’s behind on the rent, and I’d really like to help her out.”

  Russell looked at her as if she were a thick-skulled dunce. “There’s no way Delaney’s going to give a girl that job, and you know it.”

  “But he may give it to me,” Susan said, “if I pretend to be a boy.”

  Russell stared hard at her, but now there was a light in his eyes. “This I’ve got to hear.” He closed his book with a bang. “You’re telling me that you want to go to Delaney disguised as a boy?”

  “Sure. I’ll wear one of your caps and an old pair of knickers. He’ll never know the difference.”

  Russell screwed his mouth to one side and studied Susan. “You’ve got the hair already.” A few months ago, Susan had talked Mum into giving her one of the new bobs all the girls were getting. “It just might work.” A smile spread across his face. “I like it. Old Delaney’s always working us to death, taking tips that should be ours. What a lark to see someone get the best of him. And a girl at that.” He chuckled. “When do you want to go?”

  “Better sooner than later,” said Susan. “You talk to him tomorrow, then I’ll go down the day after.”

  “Sammy MacGowan, huh?” Mr. Delaney peered over his spectacles at Susan.

  Susan’s heart thumped against her ribs so hard she was sure Delaney could hear it. Russell’s clothes itched, and his cap on her head was too big. It kept falling over one eye. Susan concentrated as hard as she could on Bea’s words to Mum about showing confidence even when you didn’t feel it. Then she answered boldly, “Yes, sir.”

  Delaney’s curly eyebrows knit together. He scrutinized her as if she were a plump turkey hanging in Paddy’s Market.